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Friday, 16 June 2017

The extreme-right are blaming anyone but those who are actually responsible

Imagine the kind of mentality of a person who would look at a disaster like the Grenfell tower fire and immediately set about using it to promote their own anti-EU or anti-immigrant agenda and you've got a glimpse into the mindset of the depraved hacks who work for Britain's gutter press."Did EU regulation mean deadly cladding was used on Grenfell Tower" blared the Daily Express in a sick effort to turn the blame away from those responsible for this blatantly avoidable tragedy and onto the EU.The briefest look at the EU energy efficiency regulation in question reveals that the rules should not override other existing building rules such as accessibility, safety and intended use of the building.

Additionally the law in question (here) doesn't even mention external cladding of buildings, and the flammable cladding in question is outright banned in Germany (an EU state).Given that the safety consideration is expressly stated in the preamble, and the energy efficiency regulations don't even mention cladding, let alone demand flammable cladding, the only way anyone could ask whether these rules caused the tragedy is if they a. hadn't even bothered to read the regulations they're attacking, or b. were well aware of the fact that the rules aren't to blame at all, but saw the deadly fire as a fantastic opportunity to smear the EU, even though the facts don't even remotely fit their anti-EU narrative.Either option suggests that the author of the piece is spectacularly unfit to work in journalism.The Daily Mail also attempted to muddy the waters by falsely trying to blame environmental legislation on their front page, and by callously exposing the poor guy whose fridge went on fire triggering the blaze.

There's absolutely no way the poor guy can be blamed for the fact that the building was so dangerously refurbished that the whole tower could be turned into a deadly inferno by an electrical fault in his apartment.It's interesting that the Daily Mail didn't bother to root out photos of the chief executive of the privatised housing management company (KCTMO), the boss of the flammable cladding company, the private contractors who fit the cladding, the Tory local council, the Tory MPs who spent the last four years sitting on a tower block fire safety report, whoever was responsible for the decision to fit flammable rather than flame retardant cladding, or members of the law firm that threatened to sue the Grenfell residents for raising concerns about the housing management company).A quick look through Twitter also reveals a parade of depraved right-wingers blaming the fire on immigrants. Here's one example of outright lies from a rabid extreme-right account with over 50,000 Twitter followers:

So in a desperate attempt to turn blame away from the Tory government, the Tory local council and the parade of private companies responsible for this tragedy, this extreme-right Twitter sicko is spreading lies in order to blame the residents for their own deaths.

The claim that the building was "entirely full of immigrants" is an outright and easily disprovable lie, and there is no actual evidence to prove that the corridors were full of rubbish either.

This kind of depraved victim-blaming is sickeningly reminiscent of the Hillsborough tragedy, where the powerful people who caused the disaster were protected from blame by an absolute barrage of lies and smears about the conduct of the victims.

Conclusion

The extreme-right and the gutter press are desperate to cast the blame onto anyone or anything other than the Tory government and the wealthy and powerful people who are actually responsible. The EU ... energy efficiency laws ... immigrants ... the actual victims of the disaster ... no excuse is too depraved for these scumbags.

The sad thing is that significant numbers of people will be taken in by these extreme-right misdirection tactics, and will mindlessly accept the narrative that the EU, immigrants, environmental legislation and the residents themselves are to blame, because these misdirection tactics chime with the blame the EU/immigrants/environmental legislation/poor people for everything narratives they've been programmed to believe in by the extreme-right and the gutter press.

In the sickeningly warped mindset of the extreme-right and the gutter press hacks, there is literally no tragedy on earth that can't be blamed on some of, or all of their traditional totems of hate (the EU, immigrants, poor people, Muslims, lefties, environmentalists, social liberals, Health and Safety legislation ...) and literally nothing is or ever will be the fault of Tories or profiteering private companies.

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